All posts by bogeywebdesign

magicthegathering, video games

Future Site – 3rd Set in Time Spiral Block

I have been meaning for awhile to expand my thoughts to one of my other favorite hobbies besides web design – Magic the Gathering.  I have been collecting and playing since 1997 and up until recently I could say with confidence that the Uzra’s Block was by far my favorite.  I might have to change that with the new Time Spiral block.  I have been very impressed with the cards they brought back and even more so with the last set, Planar Chaos, and the cards they shifted – red Giant Growths, black Wrath of Gods, etc.  They just started previewing Future Sight, the last set in the block and it looks to be just as awesome.

While Time Spiral was about bringing back old cards and Planar Chaos about shifting those cards in new and interesting ways this new site looks towards the future of Magic.  The Future Is Now previews a very interesting new card Fleshwrither with the new ability transfigure.  They also let out that it will be the only card in the set with that ability.  It has some pretty interesting possibilities – the most obvious being you could sacrifice him as a blocker, pay the cost, then switch out for another more powerful card.  Since they don’t swap the new creature will be unharmed.

The author also talks about nostalgia and I have felt a lot of that during this set.  I have also had several cool new deck ideas that have come to mind especially with the planar chaos cards.  The ability to use effects in other colors that didn’t previously exist (at least in abundance) – like white direct damage – opens up new possibilities.  It also allows you to expand on new ideas by doubling the amount of cards you can have that do essentially the same thing.  One example?  Essence and Soul Warden.  Instead of the normal 4 of that creature, you can have 8.  They also have a red version of Prodigal Sorcerer who’s name escapes me right now – imagine having 8 of those in a deck.  Possibly 12 if you include the merfolk that does the same thing.  Pretty powerful especially combined with a card like Intruder Alarm.

I plan to have more thoughts on deck ideas, new cards and maybe even a few lists of my own decks soon.

Random Tidbit:  This is from awhile back and may have been too preemptive for it’s own good but I found an article entitled “It’s Official: PS3 is a dud for Sony.”  I have not seen the PS3 in action but nothing I’ve heard has impressed me.  Most of the games that would attract me to them are no longer exclusive.  I definitely think that I will be jumping ship again this generation to XBox 360 and maybe Wii later on.  I don’t think I would invest in a PS3 even if the price dropped considerably.  I think Sony has finally gone one step too far and alienated the consumer.  At least in my case they have.

SEO, web design

Ranking in Google

1 Comment

I pulled an article from my feeds the other day from SEOmoz that was very interesting.  Basically, it’s a discussion and compilation of what is important SEO-wise for sites from 37 of the top people in the field.  For those of us who can’t afford our own search engine marketers and/or don’t have a lot of experience separating the myths from the facts it was very eye opening.  It confirmed a lot of what I had believed and implemented, as well as adding some new ideas to my head.

It is a rather long article, so I’ve compiled a sort of top 10 list of things that they found to be extremely important.  These are not in order of importance.  All factors are taken from the article and are attributed to SEOmoz.  Summaries are provided for convenience by BogeyWebDesign.

  1. Page title tag – using keywords in your title tag not only shows up in results but is likely one of, if not the, highest ranking SEO element.  Christine Churchill said it best: “If you have time to do only one SEO action on your site, take the time to create good titles.” One interesting negative factor is repetition of title on many pages – keep your titles as page specific as possible.
  2. Link popularity of site – incoming links, both in quality and quantity.  It also talks about sub-categorizing this further as links inbound from high ranking sites in your niche also help.
  3. Age of site – not when registered but from the date of first index by search engines.  Google especially factors this in with regards to trust.
  4. Anchor text of inbound links – the text around the links coming to your site.  Has started to depreciate though according to their experts.
  5. Keyword use in body text – how much the search term appears in your actual content.
  6. Relationship of content to keyword – how much your content actually matches those keywords.  This could also hurt you if you pull in for a keyword but don’t support it – in the case of spammers putting high use keywords to pull in for say selling ED medicine.
  7. Keyword Use in H1 Tag – the trick is to avoid too much repetition of keywords.  Perhaps a broader one in your title, with more meaty relevant content around the keyword in the H1 tag.
  8. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links – do inbound links to your site focus on a similar topic.  Again, building link popularity in your niche.
  9. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – another factor they rated high that relates to being popular and relevant in your niche.
  10. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site – how often do people link to your site.  The more popular you are, the more relevant you likely are to the subject.

So it seems that not only should you build a key site, but by becoming a player in your niche/topic – through white hat tactics – you will gain more credibility.  It makes sense.  For example, when you google “css” one of the top links is the CSS Zen Garden.  What is that site known for?  Revolutionizing the use of CSS on the web.  And most sites that have content on CSS likely link to them one or more times.  I probably have a dozen if not more links to that one site on mine.

The bottom line?  Design a clean, relevant site with keywords prominently displayed in the right places – title tag, H1’s – and work to become a resource to other sites in your niche as well as people who might be searching the web for that content.

Random Tidbit: Also on SEOmoz is a nice tool to help you see the page strength of your site SEO-wise.  I used it on my site and between that and the article have already taken steps to strengthen my site including changing my homepage title tag and trying to get my site re-indexed – especially considering I’ve added dozens of pages of new content.  I think I might delete my old blog since repetition issues might be the case.

SEO, wordpress

5 WordPress Plugins Everyone Should Use

I’ve finally started to get my site up and running and have been actively searching for various plugins to enhance my site. So far, I’ve come up with a short list that anyone should start with in order to have the basic functionality – for yourself or a client – without paying a lot from a hosting company or anyone else to have them.

  1. Akismet – because of the good code, SEO-wise, that WordPress generates you get a lot of traffic. Unfortunately, that means you get a lot of bad traffic too – including comment spam. A must have.
  2. Google Analytics – a simple google account and you have access to all the advanced stats you could ever want or need – does any more really need to be said?
  3. Google Sitemap Generator – with the same google account you can generate an XML sitemap – that will dynamically re-create itself and notify Google everytime you add a post – that will allow the 3 major search engines to index your entire site easier.
  4. Share This – nearly every social bookmarking site known to man is included, as well as a feature for people to e-mail your site/post/page to friends. Easily allow your users to index your site for you with popular sites like del.icio.us and get traffic from sites like digg and reddit.
  5. Add Meta Tags – although less important for SEO, this plugin lets you dynamically generate keyword and description metatags based upon your categories and the content of your post.

Random Tidbit: Excellent article on five principles to design by.

life

Unplanned Hiatus

I realized after my last post that I had sort of taken a long, unplanned hiatus from my blog.  I apologize for that.  Between work and my personal life, I was just not feeling creative enough to provide content that I thought was of value for the topics I usually contribute to.  Work has been going good, I have finally become a full fledged member of the Helium team, and we have a lot of exciting things coming up.  I can’t talk too much about them, but I’m proud to be part of the team.  I’m learning a great deal and though I definitely feel like a junior member of the team I hope to increase my contributions as time goes on.

One thing I have been reading more into is mash-ups and pipes.  I hope to have more interesting thoughts and ideas on that in the coming week to ten days.  I’m still trying to find if there are any legal problems with this type of site – I’m assuming if I have no ads and no income generated from it, likely not, which is how I plan mine to be – but I want to research it a little more.  If you have any knowledge on this, please feel free to let me know.

I have also, as I mentioned, stumbled into the wall of providing unique and interesting content on a regular basis.  Unlike most blogs, I don’t see this as a sort of diary.  It’s purpose is more as a guide to web design from a beginner to intermediate level with tips, ideas and thoughts on css, accessibility, web standards and search engine optimization.  I have been thinking of changing or merging it with interested writers in like subjects to form a more well rounded and more frequently updated information source.  The same sort of people you would find on a development team – database gurus, development (php, ruby on rails, cold fusion, etc), and possibly even a graphic designer viewpoint.  I’m not sure if there is the interest out there or even if my audience constituents those types of people, but I’m curious to see if that might be a better solution and provide a better product.  Otherwise I may have to consider scrapping my blog and simply using my articles as content on my site – which I look to be updating and expanding again soon.

Random Tidbit: I found a blog containing an interesting look at different brand name logos redesigned with a web 2.0 feel.  Very interesting.

css, web design, webstandards

Is IE7 the Solution or More of the Same?

I had high hopes as I began to read the early beta versions reviews of IE7 and the numerous fixes they had over IE6.  I had seen some of my work in IE7 and was pleasantly surprised that it worked.  Then I began to dig deeper.

The problems began when you have used hacks or filters to feed specific CSS to IE6.   Now those who use these knew they would potentially cause future problems and that Microsoft approved conditional statements would be the better choice.   However in some cases – particularly in the instances where you inherit code or time is of the essence and you simply do not have the time to separate them all out – a designer would opt for the quicker and dirtier solution of a hack.

The problem is that, essentially, not all of the problems from 6 have been fixed in 7.  So you now have the new star hack – a version of the underscore hack where you can use *property: values to feed a separate CSS to only IE.  Unfortunately, 6 picks up on these as well and typically does not break in the same way – normally on heights and the box model – so you must follow with either an underscore hack or the * html property filter – called the tan and/or holly hack I believe – to fix 6.  So now you have an extra filter in addition to one you shouldn’t have/need in the first place.

Again, the short and simple solution is to use the conditional statements.  While semantically they are very inelegant, they will make your life as a designer much easier.  Hopefully IE8, or future updates of 7, will fix these issues.  It is a vast improvement so I am hopeful.  The fact that they copied many of the good elements from the other browsers out there – including add-ons, a variation of the extensions from firefox – is a good sign.  I don’t typically say this, but my hat is off to the Internet Explorer team.

Random Tidbit: Blog writer Robert Accettura had some interesting Secrets in Websites.  Very interesting and conspiratorial.